July 23

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette (July 23, 1776).

“All residents in said Town … are requested to attend and give in their votes.”

Newspaper advertisements sometimes made important announcements during the era of the American Revolution.  An advertisement in the July 23, 1776, edition of Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette, for instance, informed readers that the most recent provincial convention “resolved, that Baltimore Town shall have two Representatives in a Convention to be held in August next, for the express purpose of forming a New Government,” a government established “by the authority of the people only” in the wake of the Continental Congress declaring independence from Great Britain.  “Notice is hereby given,” the advertisement continued, “that an election will be held by open poll, on Monday the 5th day of August next, at the Court-House, to choose the two members aforesaid.”  Furthermore, “all residents in said Town, who by law were intitled to vote for Delegates in Assembly, (except such as have been published as enemies to this country) are requested to attend and give in their votes.”

That notice appeared among the other advertisements in Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette, alongside employment notices, descriptions of indentured servants who ran away, and an advertisement for “KEYSER’s FAMOUS PILLS” and other patent medicines.  The men who signed the notice – James Calhoun, John Merryman, Jr., and William Aisquith – apparently paid to insert it in Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette and in the Maryland Journal as well.  The printers of those newspapers could have included such important information with the news that they selected to disseminate to readers. They could have even given the notice a prominent place on the front page, publishing it as a public service as the state created its “New Government, by the authority of the people.”  Instead, they treated the notice as an advertisement rather than news, presumably generating revenue each time it appeared in their newspapers.  Readers knew that news of various sorts, including legal notices, often ran as advertisements.  They realized that the news in any issue of an early American newspaper did not necessarily end when the advertisements began.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 23, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette (July 23, 1776).

**********

Pennsylvania Evening Post (July 23, 1776).

July 22

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (July 22, 1776).

“EXTRACT from the WORK.”

John Dunlap devoted nearly half the space on the first page of the July 22, 1776, edition of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet to an advertisement for his Philadelphia edition of Richard Price’s Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America.  A month earlier, Thomas Fleet and John Fleet ran an advertisement for their Boston edition of the popular pamphlet.  Rather than merely use the table of contents as the copy for their advertisement (as printers and booksellers often did), they added their own note that this “judicious and exceeding well wrote Pamphlet was published in London in March last and had had a very rapid Sale there.”  Friends of the American cause “thought [the pamphlet] would tend much to open the Eyes of the Nation.”  Accordingly, the Fleets considered the pamphlet “well worthy the Perusal of every lover of Civil Liberty and good Government in America; for which Reason the Printers propose to sell them at the moderate price of one shilling and six Pence each” compared to two shillings charged in London.

Dunlap inserted different commentary to demonstrate the reception and influence the pamphlet received and, in turn, attempt to incite demand among readers.  “This learned, judicious and liberal author,” the advertisement declared, “had the thanks of the Common Council, and the Freedom of the City of London presented to him in a gold box, for this his much admired most excellent pamphlet on Civil Liberty.”  In addition to that honor, “he also deserves the united thanks of America.”  Yet Dunlap did even more to promote his Philadelphia edition of the pamphlet.  He inserted an “EXTRACT from the WORK” that extended more than a column, giving readers a preview and enticing them to read more.  In so doing, Dunlap reduced the amount of space for news items and paid notices in that issue of the newspaper, apparently considering the length of the advertisement, especially the “EXTRACT,” worth the investment.  He may have also intended that the “EXTRACT” double as a letter to the editor in making the case in support of the American cause.

Dunlap and the Fleets were not alone in publishing local editions of Price’s pamphlet in America.  David Bruce published the pamphlet in Charleston and Samuel Loudon published it in New York.  Printers in the four largest urban ports made local editions of the pamphlet available to readers in their cities.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 22, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Boston-Gazette (July 22, 1776).

**********

Boston-Gazette (July 22, 1776).

**********

Connecticut Courant (July 22, 1776).

**********

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (July 22, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (July 22, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (July 22, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (July 22, 1776).

**********

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (July 22, 1776).

**********

Norwich Packet (July 22, 1776).

July 21

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Pennsylvania Ledger (July 20, 1776).

“Simes’s Military Guide for officers, 2 vol.”

After the Continental Congress voted to declare independence on July 2, 1776, and approved the Declaration of Independence two days later, the war that began with the skirmishes at Concord and Lexington in Massachusetts had a new purpose.  Colonizers and subjects of George III no longer fought for redress of grievances within the British imperial system; instead, settlers and citizens of a new nation fought for independence from that empire.  The military manuals that American printers had been printing, advertising, and selling for the past two years and longer were as important as ever.  Printers and booksellers continued promoting them in newspaper advertisements.

In an advertisement in the first column on the first page of the July 20 edition of the Pennsylvania Ledger, for instance, James Humphreys, Jr., the printer of that newspaper, declared that “A few Copies of the Military Guide FOR YOUNG OFFICERS, By THOMAS SIMES … embellished with a Number of Copperplates … May be had of the PRINTER hereof.”  Humphreys jointly published Simes’s military manual with Robert Aitken and Robert Bell.  For several months he had been hawking the book.  Bell also continued advertising and selling it.  In his own advertisement on the last page of that issue of the Pennsylvania Ledger, he listed it among the “following MILITARY WORKS, some of them very valuable, and seldom to be met with, [that] may be had at R. BELL’s.”  He also stocked “New System of Military Discipline, founded on Principle, by a General Officer,” a manual that Aitken printed and previously advertised, and “Hoste and Webster’s Mechanics, Fortification, Artillery, or Gunnery, adapted to the use of the Gentlemen of the Army and Navy.”  Bell did not mention the copperplate engravings that illustrated Simes’s military manual, but he did note that “LE Blond’s Military Engineer, containing the attack and defence of all kinds of fortified places” came with “numerous and excellent copperplates.”  He also carried copies of “ARCHITECTURE HYDRAULIQUE,” a manual on hydraulic architecture and “usage du cours des eaux dans les operations de la Guerre des Sieges & de Campaign” [utilizing watercourses in siege and field warfare operations], for readers who understood French.  Not surprisingly, printers and booksellers highlighted military manuals in their newspaper advertisements during the Revolutionary War.

July 20

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Freeman’s Journal (July 20, 1776).

“The Printing-Business, in it’s different branches carried on with care and fidelity.”

Like many other American printers, Benjamin Dearborn, the printer of the Freeman’s Journal, or New-Hampshire Gazette, used the colophon as an advertisement for the various services he provided.  The colophon for the Freeman’s Journal ran across all three columns at the bottom of the last page, separated from other content by two lines.  It stated: “PORTSMOUTH: Printed by BENJAMIN DEARBORN, near the Parade, where this Paper may be had at Eight Shillings L[awful]. M[oney]. per year, one half at entrance.  The Printing- Business, in it’s different branches carried on with care and fidelity.”  Whatever the other content, each issue concluded with an advertisement from the printer.

Usually that meant that news and paid notices appeared above the colophon, but only one other item ran on the final page of the July 20, 1776, edition of the Freeman’s Journal.  Dearborn printed the entire “DECLARATION, By the Representatives of the UNITED STATES of AMERICA, In General Congress assembled,” approved on July 4.  The Freeman’s Journal was one of the last American newspapers to print the Declaration of Independence, yet Dearborn delivered it in an especially attractive format for his subscribers.  As the only item (except for the colophon) on the final page, it could be removed from the newspaper and displayed.  John Holt, the printer of the New-York Journal, was the only other printer to present the Declaration of Independence as a broadside within a newspaper.  He underscored that “a number of our Customers, … intend to separate it from the rest of the paper, and fix it up, in open view, in their Houses, as a mark of their approbation of the INDEPENDENT SPIRIT of their Representatives.”  In making that observation, Holt delivered instructions to other subscribers that they should similarly display the broadside integrated into that issue in their homes, shops, or offices.  Both Dearborn and Holt included a colophon or imprint at the bottom of the broadside Declaration of Independence in their newspapers.  Subscribers could trim them before displaying the broadsides, but those who did not displayed advertisements for the printers as well as the founding document of the new nation.

Freeman’s Journal (July 20, 1776).

Slavery Advertisements Published July 20, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Constitutional Gazette (July 20, 1776).

**********

Freeman’s Journal (July 20, 1776).

**********

Providence Gazette (July 20, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (July 20, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (July 20, 1776).

**********

Virginia Gazette [Dixon and Hunter] (July 20, 1776).

Advertisements for Common Sense Published July 20, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Special Features

Historians consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published anonymously on January 9, 1776, the most influential political pamphlet that circulated in the colonies during the era of the American Revolution.  Written in plain language accessible to readers of all backgrounds, the pamphlet made a bold case for declaring independence at a time that many colonizers still sought a redress their grievances by George III and Parliament.  Paine’s pamphlet played a vital role in swaying public opinion in favor of declaring independence.

Common Sense was an eighteenth-century bestseller, though Paine wildly overestimated how many copies were published, claiming 150,000 circulated in 1776, and historians later made even more dubious claims that American printing presses produced as many as 500,000 copies.  Contrary to those exaggerations, American printers most likely published between 35,000 and 50,000 copies in 1776.  Scholars have identified twenty-five American editions, more than twice as many as any other American book or pamphlet published in the eighteenth century.

Colonizers certainly discussed Paine’s pamphlet … and printers, booksellers, and others advertised it widely.  As a special feature, the Adverts 250 Project chronicles those advertisements, starting with newspaper notices for Robert Bell’s first edition published in Philadelphia and then subsequent advertisements for that and other editions published and sold throughout the colonies.

These advertisements for Common Sense appeared in American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Freeman’s Journal (July 20, 1776).

July 19

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Essex Journal (July 19, 1776).

“Sundry Advertisements, Articles of Intelligence, &c. omitted for want of room.”

On July 19, 1776, yet another printer informed readers that some items did not appear in that issue of his newspaper due to lack of space.  This time it was John Mycall in the Essex Journal and New-Hamnpshire Packet, published in Newburyport, Massachusetts.  He informed readers of “Sundry Advertisements, Articles of Intelligence, &c. omitted for want of room.”  Six days earlier, the Providence Gazette carried a similar notice: “[Advertisements omitted will be in our next.]”  A day before that, Timothy Green, the printer of the Connecticut Gazette, pledged that his newspaper “digested every material Occurrence that is come to Hand” even though it consisted of “only a Half Sheet Paper this Week.”  In each instance, the newspapers carrying those notices printed the Declaration of Independence for subscribers and other readers to examine for themselves.

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (July 19, 1776).

In this case, the Declaration of Independence appeared as the first item on the first page of the Essex Journal, followed immediately by “A PROCLAMATION, For a day of public humiliation, fasting and prayer” adopted by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in Watertown on July 4, 1776.  By July 19, almost every other newspaper published in New England had printed the Declaration of Independence, making the text of the document available to Mycall via an exchange network of printers.  Except for Solomon Southwick and the Newport Mercury, no printers adjusted their weekly publication schedule or published a supplement or extraordinary issue to disseminate the Declaration of Independence.  As a result, the founding document sometimes ran where space was available on the second or third page and other times had a prominent spot on the front page.  It seemingly depended on when a printer received a copy compared to when the next issue went to press.  The placement of the Declaration of Independence on the first page of the July 19, 1776, edition of the Essex Journal suggests that Mycall had a copy far enough in advance that he could have chosen to publish a supplement or extraordinary issue but instead opted to make it part of the standard issue.  The amount of space required to do so meant less room for “Sundry Advertisements, [and] Articles of Intelligence.”

The same day, Alexander Purdie made a curious and quite different decision about publishing the Declaration of Independence in his Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg.  Rather than print the entire document, he published an “Abstract from the minutes of the General Congress, of Thursday the 4th instant, declaring the United Colonies free and independent states.”  Purdie promised that the Declaration of Independence “will be published at full length in next week’s Gazette,” but he did not explain why he chose not to publish it in that issue.  The “Abstract” ran on the second page.  Purdie had enough space to include the entire document if he left out other “Articles of Intelligence” or “Sundry Advertisements.”  Instead, he explained that the “first part of the declaration is a recapitulation of injuries,” referring to the grievances against the king, “and it concludes as follows.”  The final three paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence ran in the center column on the second page of Purdie’s Virginia Gazette.

When they acquired copies of the Declaration of Independence, printers made decisions about when to publish it and whether to displace other content to make the document available to the public.  In most cases they did not deliver news of independence.  That spread via word of mouth more quickly than printing presses, but the proliferation of printed copies of the Declaration of Independence in American newspapers allowed the public to engage with the rationale and results for themselves.

Slavery Advertisements Published July 19, 1776

Carl Robert Keyes Slavery Adverts 250 Project

The Slavery Adverts 250 Project chronicles the role of newspaper advertising in perpetuating slavery in the era of the American Revolution. The project seeks to reveal the ubiquity of slavery in eighteenth-century life from New England to Georgia by republishing advertisements about enslaved people – for sale as individuals or in groups, wanted to purchase or for hire for short periods, runaways who liberated themselves, and those who were subsequently captured and confined in jails and workhouses – in daily digests on this site as well as in real time via the @SlaveAdverts250 Twitter feed, utilizing twenty-first-century media to stand in for the print media of the eighteenth century.

The project aims to provide modern audiences with a sense of just how often colonizers encountered these advertisements in their daily lives. Enslaved men, women, and children appeared in print somewhere in the colonies almost every single day. Those advertisements served as a constant backdrop for social, cultural, economic, and political life in colonial and revolutionary America. Colonizers who did not purport to own enslaved people were still confronted with slavery as well as invited to maintain the system by purchasing enslaved men, women, and children or assisting in the capture of so-called “runaways” who sought to free themselves from bondage. The frequency of these newspaper advertisements suggests just how embedded slavery was in colonial and revolutionary American culture in everyday interactions beyond the printed page.

These advertisements also testify to the experiences of enslaved men, women, and children, though readers must consider that those experiences have been remediated through descriptions offered by enslavers rather than enslaved people themselves. Often unnamed in the advertisements, enslaved men, women, and children were not invisible or unimportant in early America.

These advertisements appeared in revolutionary American newspapers 250 years ago today.

Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (July 19, 1776).

**********

Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (July 19, 1776).

**********

Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (July 19, 1776).

**********

Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (July 19, 1776).

**********

Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (July 19, 1776).

**********

Supplement to the Virginia Gazette [Purdie] (July 19, 1776).